Storm gaped. He pressed his nose to the glass. His sense of well-being deserted him on the instant. He felt woozy suddenly, paralyzed there, his marrow ice, his sinew water. It was real, he thought. He was really seeing it. He was seeing something anyway, a spectral something gliding through the mist, gliding steadily towards the fragment of the chapel wall.

He watched. He couldn’t move or speak—couldn’t breathe almost—but only gaped and gaped unblinking as if he were petrified on the spot.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“What is it?” said Sophia behind him.

He didn’t answer her. An hallucination, he thought. It must be an hallucination. But still it went on. And, as he peered into the night, the silent, mournful phantasm proceeded with its lifeless grace to the end of the churchyard, to all that remained of the chapel.

And there, beside that ruined wall—before the small crypt where Storm himself had stood—there, as he stood watching, frozen and amazed, the jet absence seemed to sink at the same stately pace, sink lower and lower into the hard earth, until only the head remained above the surface.

And then that too—all, all of it—had vanished.

Storm blinked. He felt very dizzy now, almost faint. He was sweating, cold. Hallucination. Definitely. That had to be what it was. And now, the massing mist, propelled before the wind, surged over the ruin, swept across the moon. In seconds, the torn curtain seemed to close. A steamy, roiling darkness pressed itself against the window.

Storm gave a whiffling laugh. “Nah,” he said. “Nah.”

But second after second passed, and he found he couldn’t move. He could only gaze—gaze and gaze—at the invisible night as if that gliding figure were still before him.

Then Sophia broke his trance with a stifled cry. “Oh God,” she said. “Oh, Richard—there it is.”

“Huh?” said Storm thickly.

He had to tear himself from the night to turn to her. And when he saw her, even before she spoke again, the hairs on the back of his neck actually felt as if they were standing on end.

Sophia had risen from the bed. She was standing beside it, one hand thrown out to one of the posts. Her face was expressionless, her features cold, but there was a frightened, almost pleading look in her eyes.

And she said, “Listen. Can’t you hear it? It’s just the same. It’s just the same.” She turned to him. “Oh, Richard. Don’t you hear it? What is it?”

Storm laughed uncertainly as she appealed to him. He had heard people say that they felt as if they were dreaming, but he’d never before experienced it himself. Now he did. Unclear in his mind, unsteady on his feet, he found himself once more in the grip of a sickening impression that his life was unreal.